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San Jose Kids Introduced to 3D Printing

The San Jose Mercury News was on site at a recent event in their city: 3D Print Jam at the Tech Museum of Innovation.This event offered tutorials on CAD programs and 3D printing and scanning.

Kids were offered the opportunity to create and design models of everything from robots to animals to unicorns; whatever their imaginations could come up with.The Mercury News was impressed when “no one blinked [as] presenter Nick Kloski of HoneyPoint3D in Oakland talked about STL – surface tessellation language, the file format for 3D printing – or Thingiverse, the website for free 3D models.”

“Beginners used Tinkercad, free browser-based software, and Chromebooks to pluck off-the-virtual-shelf shapes and assemble them into designs.Every hour, Tech staff held a random drawing for one design to be printed.”

Some of these kids are excited about the opportunities 3D printing can provide them.Kids like Kai Wessel, 11, of Mountain View: ‘Before you couldn’t get a 3D model.It would have to be sculpted out of something’, he said…”He’s been researching 3D printing” on his own.

“Kai was being scanned with a camera at a booth by Twindom, an Oakland company that produces miniature statues of people.‘It would be so cool to have on your desk, instead of a picture of your family, a little model of you family,’ said Kai’s dad, Alan Wessel.”

Demonstrations like 3D Print Jam in San Jose offer a chance for a new generation to get excited by the potentials of this technology.Who knows?In a few short years, these kids could be leading the 3D printing revolution.